.. knox.

>> when you're supposed to use it, yeah. knox. [inaudible conversations] >> ann coulter at a book party launching her new book, "demonic," hosted by the heritage foundation. to find out more about ann coulter and her work visit anncoulter.com. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the por -- format. booktv streams online every

weekend for 48 hours, booktv.org. >> up next on booktv, from politics & prose bookstore here in washington, simon sebag montefiore talks about the 3,000-year history of jerusalem. [applause] >> thank you, that's very nice. thank you so much. um, and i apologize so much for keeping you waiting. thanks for, um, thanks for waiting for me. i had no idea that the traffic on connecticut avenue. so let's go straight to jerusalem. um, i've been going to jerusalem all my life, ever since i was a little, little boy, ever since i was a baby. and ever since i've been a writer i've wanted to write, basically, this book that i've now written. and i've been thinking of a way to write about jerusalem. the trouble with jerusalem is, as you know, there are millions of books about jerusalem. all of them are about the

israel-palestine conflict, king david, the crusades or jesus. and there's nothing, there's very few books -- there's only one book in print, in fact, in english that is a sort of parallel history to this which is karen armstrong's book which many of you may have seen. and that's really a theological book. it's a wonderful book, but it's really about the nature of god in jerusalem. now, i wanted to read a book that was really about not just the architecture, not just the holiness, the theology, not just one empire after another conquering it, but the people that made jerusalem and how they built it and how it developed. because, after all, it's people, it's families that build cities. and jerusalem is aty that's both evolve -- is a city that's both evolved and been created by great dramatic acts of destruction as well, and it's a combination of these two things, and i wanted to catch that. so i looked for this book for a long times, and i couldn't find it. and i wrote other books about russia. and once i read about bepg

lin -- benjamin israeli who's a hero of mine, and he said when i want to read a book, i write it. and so humbly following in his footsteps -- [laughter] i've slightly done the same thing here. >> i'm sorry, sir. >> is that fall functioning? -- malfunctioning? >> no, not anymore. >> good. so i set about writing this book, "jerusalem: the biography." first of all, probably many of you know in the jewish scriptures jerusalem is always described as a woman. sometimes a mistress abandoned by her lovers, sometimes beautiful princess in scarlet silks, but always a woman. so that's one reason. jerusalem has a personality, it's an idea that i liked and that appealed to me, and it suits the place. but also i said this is about the people. and what i wanted to do was

create a, create a book that would confront very complicated ideas. after all, the names alone are incredibly complicated. there are babylonian names, turkish names, english names, hebrew or arabic names and so on. so many civilizations, so the book had to be readable by someone who really knew nothing about the middle east, nothing about jerusalem and didn't read history books. namely, my mother. [laughter] and, um, and so that's why i designed it so that it's in very small sections, and each section is a person. and it's a person who helped make a city in some way or other. and basically, the great thing about being a writer is they're the people that interested me and i loved and i wanted to write about. so it's a biography, it's a collection of biographies as well. now, some of them, some obscure

characters you may scarcely have heard of like jesus christ or david ben-gurion. and other of them, well known characters like the ottoman travel writer or osama, the arab knight and writer during the time of the crusades. and some of these people are people i discovered. i hadn't heard of them before, and i'm sure many of you haven't either. but it's partly a literary book, and partly i just wanted to share with you the joy of reading about jerusalem and discovering these people, and maybe if you read the book, you'll go off and read more books about jerusalem, go back to the primary source that catches your imagination. so that's why i wrote this book. that's why i decided to do it. now, the great challenge of jerusalem, of course, is that it's both the blessing and the curse of jerusalem that everybody feels that jerusalem is partly owned by them.

everybody has a vision of jerusalem even though, um, you may be a secular person, an atheist, a person who despises religion. you will still have a view of what jerusalem should be. and, of course, if you're a religious person, you have a very strong view of what jerusalem should be. and that's why at the moment, a fascinating time in history because even though washington, d.c. to london to paris many of us look upon religious people with a slightly mocking smile, we think that, you know, we portray them often in the media as a sort of borderline mad. um, in fact, in america, in the middle east, in jerusalem, all over the world, you know, obviously, fundamentalist people -- by which i mean people who believe the bible is fundamentally the divine word of god or the koran -- um, those people are increasing in numbers

within three great abrahamic faiths. and in jerusalem, i'm sure many of you who have been there recently, you feel this strongly now. um, you feel it strongly. you know, the number of, um, muslims, palestinians, for example, who are now extremely observant has increased enormously since i started going to jerusalem as a child. and, you know, when you walk through the streets of jerusalem, you often -- the call to prayer, now you see people, um, you know, going down and praying in a way that you would never have seen 40 years ago. of course, the jews, there are far more harady jews, and christians in america, you know about evangelism more than we do in england. so you need no explanation. but all these three groups of people, jerusalem is the place -- as it was for the mohamed, as it was for jesus -- is the place where when the kingdom of heaven comes, judgment day, the apocalypse, the second coming, the coming of

the messiah, whatever you want to call it, it will happen in jerusalem. it can only happen in jerusalem. it will happen somewhere outside the golden gate. golden gate's beautiful, mystical, mysterious structure. actually, my favorite structure in the whole of jerusalem. um, and that's where it's going to happen according to all those three faiths. we're very different, we're very different scenarios, incidentally, but basically, that's where it's going to happen. so for them, for ever-increasing numbers of these people, ever more politicized, as you know, in israel but also in the muslim world, also in iran and elsewhere, um, israel is ever more the center of the world. now, you know that in, um, byzantine times up to crusader times and into the middle ages, into the middle ages really up to the reformation, you often saw maps in which jerusalem was

literally the center of the world, and you've seen those maps. there's one in the book. there's a cross over the world, and the cross -- the center of the cross was jerusalem, and the center of the cross in jerusalem was church of the holy she pull church and again now today in a weird sort of way and a weird 21st sort of way, jerusalem is again one of the centers of the world. i've talked about the fundamentalists' belief in the apocalypse, in judgment day. but also geopolitically, you know, in the middle east it's the fulcrum of all -- it's in the crosshairs of all the great crises, all the great conflicts of today. secularism versus fundamentalism. not just, um, between the western worlds and, say, the muslim world, but also within judaism, for example. i mean, we're in a strange situation now where, you know,

the orthodox jews often stone non-observing jews on the sabbath, for example, in jerusalem. so within the religions themselves, there is ever-growing conflict. jerusalem is at the center, of course, of the israel/palestine conflict, and that in itself has a sort of iconic value, an iconic centrality in many of the, many of the cry -- crises that are happening in the arab and muslim world. and it's of ever greater importance in europe, too, and in america. so all of these things are really being played out, um, in jerusalem in different ways. and also, you know, america versus iran. iran is very shrewdly taking up the cause of jerusalem. they have a jerusalem day, um, the elite, the elite, um, part of the revolutionary guard is called thal quds brigade.

so they have cleverly taken up jerusalem as a way they as persians, they as aryans, they are shia, and they are appealing to the sunni arabs who are often suspicious of them. so using jerusalem is a very clever way of doing this. so in so many ways jerusalem is ever more central. and it's one the sadnesses in the sense that this piles on the intensity of all the world's troubles, of all these conflicts onto the fragile stones of jerusalem which is really, when one says that, one means the temple mount, the center of holiness. the place -- what does it mean when you say "holy city"? it's a phrase that's frequently used on cnn and newspapers. what we really mean is that this is the place where on earth this is the perfect place, the prime place where god can, where god can encounter man, where man can encounter god. and that's what holy city means.

and the place for this is the temple mount in jerusalem. and, um, so that's very sort of quite a large structure, in fact, but, you know, relatively small considering the hopes, the dreams that are piled on top of it. and that's why many people who go to jerusalem are hugely disappointed by jerusalem and, hence, the jerusalem syndrome. you know what the jerusalem syndrome is, the special madness we call offto jerusalem. to jerusalem. now, in jerusalem there's a mental institution, mental hospital which specializes in the jerusalem syndrome. and every year several hundred people are hospitalized with the jerusalem syndrome. and i've been to this place, and it's one of the few places where you walk in, and you see the patients say -- if you say jesus, several people turn around. [laughter] and, in fact, there are various levels of jerusalem syndrome. and it's had many names over the years, jerusalem madnd,

jerusalem fever -- madness, jerusalem fever, but it's not just a sort of silly name for what happens to be people of jerusalem, it is a psychiatric, it's recognized by psychiatrists as a genuine, um, syndrome. and it, um, what it's caused by is the disappointment. it's particularly christian pilgrims, but actually, i think, certainly jewish pilgrims have also suffered from it, and certainly muslims have suffered from it too. and, in fact, it's one of the bizarre characteristics of jerusalem that i think just about anyone who gets control of jerusalem starts to suffer from the jerusalem syndrome too. but that's every conqueror who's managed to control jerusalem has, in the end, i think, i succumbed to it in some way. because monoatheism means if you believe, you believe in one god one way and, therefore, you simply can't compromise, you

can't muck about with the road to heaven which is the road to the last judgment. and that is why there's a peculiar nature of jerusalem. it's the one city where people don't just want to live there, they want to possess it totally. but to come back to the jerusalem syndrome, it's the disappointment. when people arrive, they're expecting a white marble city, pristine, towers rising towards the clouds where a bearded, benign god smiles down on pilgrims in perfect white robes. now, those of you who have been to jerusalem -- by the way, how many of you have been to jerusalem here? well, those of you that have been to jerusalem know it's exquisite, it's sacred, it's wonderful, it's gripping, it's compelling, it's idiosyncratic, but it's also the messiest, noisiest, angriest, most awkward, most furious, most chaotic, dusty, hot and crazy city in the whole world.

[laughter] so it's no wonder that many pilgrims who go there suffer from the jerusalem syndrome. now, when i first heard about it, i thought it was a sort of joke. i thought it was a bit of a joke which you probably do, and i'm telling you about it. but i looked it up, and i found out that recently in the last ten years there's been a very scholarly work by psychiatrists in the states, israel and england about jerusalem, and they've divided it up, they've analyzed it. it's unintelligible psychobabble, i'm not going to tell you. but at the end of it, there's a section for sort of idiots like me. and what it says is this might be useful for people who are leading groups, tour groups to jerusalem. [laughter] and anybody who's going, here are five simple, um, simple things to look for in your tour group. if one of your, if one of your people in your group start to display any of these characteristics, then call for the, um, call for the,

literally, for the institution. i'll just tell you what they are quickly because they're quite interesting. the first one is obsessional clipping of nails and toenails, fingernails and toenails, and keeping of the clippings. they don't say why that is. second one is fetishistic clipping and cutting of hair and, again, keeping the cuttings. the third one is the fashioning of toga-like robe from hotel bed linen. [laughter] the fourth one is putting on the said toga-like robe and processing, progressing to a high place. and the last one, number five, is giving there a sermon, preferably the sermon on the mount. [laughter] and so those -- if any of you -- now, my wife thinks writing this book, which i have been for five years, and you can only write this book if you're totally obsessed and immersed in the subject. she thinks i've suffered from

jerusalem syndrome for years. anyway, the book's finished now, thank god. so it's over. i have to say this book is definitely the most daunting and challenging book i've ever written. i mean, when i started to write it, i mean, obviously, the first important thing was there was no point in writing an anti-israeli history of jerusalem. there was no point in writing a pro-palestinian history. there was no point in writing a zionist history of jerusalem. all these things have been done, and i didn't want to write a to hem mix. i wanted to write as close as you can get to a history of jerusalem without bias. now, i should first of all tell you that that's quite a hard thing for me. i'm jewish, and i'm a montefiore. and being -- i should tell you ma that means because the montefiore, the character that played a great part in jerusalem was my great, great, great

uncle. and he was a fascinating character. he was born in italy, he came as a child to england in the 17 t t -- 1790s. and there he had a very successful financial career. he married -- him and the first rothchild to arrive in england married sisters, and they were in business together. and it's said, and i think it's been proven recently that they were quite naughty, the battle of waterloo. now, they had a better intelligence service than the british government did. so they knew when wellington had won the battle of waterloo before the prime minister. of course, that meant they could buy, um, british government stocks first. [laughter] so it's sad that they made a great fortune. now they call it insider trading. it hadn't been invented yet luckily for montefiore. now, he was exactly what victorians thought, aristocrats

and royalty thought a jew should be like. he was 6-4, blue-eyed, barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, and he, he was one of those people who must have had great charm. and when queen victoria met him in her diary, whenever she saw him, she used to say, i saw moses montefiore, what a grand old hebrew he is. [laughter] which at the time was a great compliment. wouldn't go down so well today. but the point was england was in a strange situation at the time, and it was a situation, it was -- many of the leaders of britain, the aristocracy and the middle class were then evangelicals, and they believed absolutely in the return of the jews to, um, to israel. the regathering of the jewish people, a jewish jerusalem and, ultimately, that this would accelerate both, they hoped, british control of the middle east and, also, um, the second

coming. and this actually coincides very much with moses montefiore's belief, and he was very friendly with the leader of these evangelicals, and they were very similar. and when moses montefiore in the 1820s went to jerusalem for the first time, he was a very worldly english gentleman who'd made his first fortune, who was jewish but not particularly orthodox. when he saw jerusalem, he fell in love with jerusalem. he went seven times. he said when he received his knighthood from king victoria, he said i was much prouder to see my banner with jerusalem written on it fluttering in the hall than i was to receive a title from the queen of england. and he became a very orthodox jew. um, he always traveled very grandly with his own silver, his own kosher butcher and the complete paraphernalia of an orthodox jew who could afford to take everything with him wherever he went. and his carriage is in jerusalem, and some of you may

have seen it there. he went seven times which was incredibly difficult and dangerous in those days. many people died on the road to jerusalem. moses went in his 80s, so he was an extraordinary character. after while giving money to the jews who were incredibly poor, he realized that for the jews to have a future there, they had to return to jerusalem, but they also had to make their own living. and so in 1860 he built, um, the first suburb outside the city walls. now, it's a fascinating thing. if you read the, if you read many of the papers in europe -- not in america, i might add, but in europe -- you would believe that all the suburbs of jerusalem that were jewish were very recent and inauthentic, and you would believe that the palestinian and the arab neighborhoods were all very, very ancient. and, in fact, the interesting thing, one of the interesting things about jerusalem is how things people think are very ancient aren't as ancient as they think. in fact, both these suburbs were

started in the 1860s. montefiore built the first jewish one, and the great palestinian families, the husseinis, etc., started almost exactly the same time to build theirs. so all of these things were built at roughly the same time, but montefiore started it, and his windmill is still there. so he brought a little bit of england to jerusalem because this windmill is from kent. it didn't work for very long. [laughter] fascinatingly -- well, what i was going to say was he built the windmill, but he also built the cottages. they're still there, two rows of them, if you've been to jerusalem. it's near the king david hotel. now, he built in very classic english style at the time. these cottages look completely out of place in jerusalem, but then so do many things. they look like they're centlated with kind of fake gothic

battlements like a medieval castle, and they look like a golf club from surrey to london sub you are ya built at that time. interesting, in 1948 as the battle for jerusalem, for palestine began, the, um, palestinian irregulars took possession of the jafa gate and the walls of jerusalem. i don't know if you can picture this, but those of you who have been there can roughly picture this. so you've got the gate looking down, you've got the montefiore windmill here, and the king david hotel here was controlled by the british, and they had a huge fortification near that. and as the battle started, the irregulars started to attack the montefiore as they called it. and they were, and the jewish defenders actually used these golf club, fake cent olated battlemented as real batments as they were very useful.

but the british were sort of vaguely backing the arab side, and at one point they blew you f the top of the montefiore wind mill which i can't forgive them for. [laughter] so that's the background and, of course, that was the beginning of a family connection to jerusalem. and it went down through many, many generations. in 1918 -- 1917, 1918 when the british took jerusalem, for example, for the british empire against the ottomans, allenby took jerusalem, by coincidence the person he made, um, assistant provost general of jerusalem which means police chief, military police chief was a nephew of moses montefiore, a sebag montefiore like me. and, um, his job was to run jerusalem, and it was very peaceful at that time. and, um, i found the family papers. all of his -- this book is overwhelmingly a work of synthesis. um, you know, i especially chose the summit in this a way --

subject in a way, there wasn't time to go archives, but there is quite a lot of stuff which is new archival material, and one of the things from my family poemers is the papers of the provost general. now, basically, his job -- there was no tension between jews and arabs at that point. but the big problem was stopping australian soldiers going into brothels in jerusalem. and allenby gave very clear instructions, and this is all in the archive that he was to stop these australians who would not be put off the brothels of jerusalem of which there were many at that time. and, um, so my answer to -- i think it was called major jeffrey sebag montefiore would regularly raid these brothels, haul out australian squatties and clap them in shackles and put them in prison for the night. and his messages to the, to his boss, field marshal lord allenby were virtually the same.

and what they say is jerusalem quiet, vd rampant. [laughter] by the way, one of the interesting things about the montefiore connection was, i mean, he adopted his -- as our family motto. so i grew up always feeling and always visiting jerusalem, that's why i went there as a child. and for those of us in the family, though, moses montefiore became a huge bore, especially for the younger members of the family. and at our jewish passover nights, the elder members of the family who -- it was a very, our jewishness was very victorian. the older members of the family would wear top hats and things like that. you wouldn't believe it in america, but it was very, very victorian. but anyway, they would go on about how wonderful moses montefiore was, he was the family saint. more recently, we started to look into him, and we found out that like all great victorian magnates, he had a secret life.

and first of all we discovered that when he died, the next day his nephew went to his house in kent and burned all his papers. it's always a bad sign. yeah. and, um, and so -- but more recently we've discovered, there were many, many rumor about his life. he was very happily married, but he was also, clearly, in his way, like i said, a typical victorian magnate. and, um, recently it's been, we've discovered that at the age of 81 he fathered a child by his 16-year-old house maid. so shock, horror. [laughter] so we, um, so this has caused, this has shocked the elder members of the family who are now in their 80s and 90s. many of them, you know, it almost finished them off. [laughter] um, but i have to say that for the younger members of the family, now they're a lot more interested in moses montefiore

than we were. [laughter] so that's how it came to be. now, the great challenge coming from this background was to write, as i said, an unbiased history of jerusalem. now, the fascinating thing about jerusalem, and many, many -- there's so much to say about it, but, of course, one of the first things one should say is that every religion has its mythology which, if you're a believer, you believe it's absolutely true. if you're not a believer, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. and, um, for jews there's abraham, there's david, there's solomon. for christians there's jesus who, um, who rises on the third day from the dead. for muslims there's a night journey of mohamed from arabia on a horse with wings and a human face to, um, to jerusalem. now, you know, when you're writing a history of jerusalem, there's no point in writing it

if you don't respect religion. and without respecting it, the history's actually meaningless anyway. so i had to have a policy for this, and my policy was not to find any religious belief absurd, but to embrace it and to, um, and to write a history you have to write -- a history of jerusalem has to be a history of the mythology as well as the facts. now, as a historian, i want to know the facts, and you may well want to know the facts. you'll find them in this book. as far as we know in an unbiased way. when i started to write this book, my father came up to me, he's in his 80s, and he said to me, simon, if you say king david doesn't exist, i'll disown you. [laughter] and someone from just about every religion because the interesting thing about the nature of jerusalem today and throughout history as you'll see if you read the book is that there's not just jews or palestinians like by think today. that's one of the tragedies of the age of nationalism, that

it's the been reduced to that. this book is about multiple identities. .. >> you will see when he talks about palestinians all the way through the book he means jews. he means the jewish community of palestine. so that's quite interesting. anyway, the point is the

palestinian arab who is one of the great families which i have written about in the book, he said i'm quite clear about my nationality i have three nationality. i am firstly jerusalem like. secondly, i'm an arab and 30 i'm an autumn and. so many people would've answered it in similar ways, similar complexity. that's pretty well what this book is about, about respecting the complex identities and different internationalist. you may not know that the armenian community in jerusalem speaks its own dialect which is special and as many works that are special, unique to jerusalem. and so on. at one point the serbians, the jordans had a share of the church. this is a very complicated -- many of them are descended from turks are autumn and.

all of the families, i've written about families, in a very small way my family but also the others, and so on. but in modern times the great families of jerusalem have been arab families. and a taken trouble to go to every one of these families and find the person who gives a family history and found out the family history of each family. all fascinating stories. the family sought that we. and by the way, the judge of the holy temple is still open every day but one of the same family. one of the oldest, they have done that at least since -- all families have family myth. it brings them back to my portrait in jerusalem the myth are as powerful as the fact that you have to write both. that's one of the peculiar characteristics to jerusalem as well is that many of the myths

are, in fact, historically wrong but i believe but a lot of people. there are many examples of this, but one is, the biggest one, almost certainly, millions of christian pilgrims walk every year, it's almost certain historically the wrong route for jesus. that it is also applies to him team different sites. for example, the tomb of simon the just focuses the great parading, reference now and hope local question any neighborhood where they were trying to build new cells and so on and so forth. this is almost certain not simon did just that all. they don't want to know it. by saying they are wrong, no, it's a place of reverence for them. but if you want to know the historical story, it's your comments on.

there are many sites like that of our religion. when people arrive in jerusalem just about all of them thought that all the big buildings they saw were built by king david or king solomon. and, in fact, all the big buildings you see are built by herod the great, the old one. in the way people say it's very old. 300 years the middle ages there were no walls into some. the walls were on type of woman to build by philip the magnificent. of course the walls around the temple mount itself are eroding an old and a very ancient. a great variety, a great friday. jerusalem itself is talk to always as the holy city, and so on and so forth. there have been times when although the great religions

have almost forgotten jerusalem. they choose i would say least pick i would say ever since 70 a.d. when it was destroyed, the jews have always revered jerusalem, once to return there and live whenever they could. for hundreds of years they were banned from jerusalem. but they kept the temple mount as a route and choose were bound. to prove the truth of jesus, that jerusalem would not be rebuilt and the temple would be destroyed. jews were allowed up there once a year to mourn at sort of a circus. the jews would lament the fall, the destruction of the temple. they would mock them. in the book you will read a christian version, a christian account of this and teachers passionate anti-jewish version.

the first 300 years of christian a jerusalem was very important passionate wasn't very important. key moments in muslim history, jerusalem was a ruin, a bandit with a 1000 people living in it. no walls. in 19 -- in 1800 the turn-of-the-century 1800, jerusalem had about 1000. even within the old city walls it was half empty. there have been times, not always been like it is today, it really was the approach of napoleon in 1798-99. when he dated egypt -- when he defeated egypt picking up to restore it. he was an early designer but he never made it to jerusalem. but that was the beginning of the return to jerusalem. which has culminated now really, jerusalem is so central to media politics and so on.

so that is how i approached the book. what time did i start talking? anyone know? 7:30. so i should stop in the second. and we can take questions, because -- but challenge has been, so given my background, given the nature of jerusalem, given the way that it is so far over, by blake on one of the we things that is the two great distractions of jerusalem, never been easier and the babylonians, these two great distractions were part of the important things in making jerusalem what it is today, making it the holy city. the destruction intensified the holiness of the place. one of my hopes for this book though is that by showing the history of all the people of jerusalem, and by telling, as

soon as i can, i knew i wouldn't be popular with everybody. in fact, i knew that i was too popular with one side or the other i would have failed in my task. at first that was difficult for me to take and then i realized i had to embrace it. the first british governor, when he came to jerusalem he was quite popular with both sides. but then he became very unpopular with both sides. so he went to his prime minister, and he said to them, prime minister, i'm very wordy, jews complaining, the arabs are complaining, what should i do? and he, quick as a flash, said if either side stops complaining, i'll fire you. [laughter] so i follow a very similar, i follow sort of a similar attitude with this book. and it's been very challenging. the early bits, biblical period,

and obviously the last 50 years. i don't quite finish the 67. it was the last change of possession of jerusalem, so that's a climax at the end of the book. goes right up as he said to obama, arab spring, to the present time. and, of course, the later the is the most controversial. when i was writing i decided i needed to get both palestinian authority, plo people to read, and the israeli government to read. and i got both people to read it. they took trouble with it. and they each gave me long memoranda is, corrections and so on. of course, both only corrective to think that they did mine things that were wrong. they just might of the things are against the interest. so after while i had to make my own judgment, which i did. and so this is, this book is the result. now, we don't know what's going

to happen with the arab spring. we don't know what's going to happen with the palestinian faithful statehood at the united nations. all the great conflicts of the world, which is so founded on jerusalem, which is so based on the love of jerusalem or fascination of jerusalem which is the holy city, the universal city, all of these things are unknown. and it would be mad to predict, no one predicted the arab spring, for example. i can see, i can see a jerusalem in 50 years it is kind of more or less shared. after all, the peace deal is almost negotiated. both sides know what the terms would be. they were very close to agreement with the palestinians. both sides of course foster myths about the other side. from the israelis, the israelis,

for example, claimed often claim they are nasty people, that the palestinian people were late and so on and so forth. that the jews came first and, therefore, the palestinians residency and their for 1500 years were, so on. ousting its have that, too. they often claim that the jewish love of jerusalem was only invented in the 1890s, that the way the war became holy very late in the 17th century, 16th century, and so on. so all of these, both sides foster lies about the other. now, you can make peace with him 16th of with how logistic you can make peace with legal documents. you make peace in united nations security council. but none of this will hold unless both sides recognize and respect somehow the heritage, the story, the truth of the

other. this, in a very small way, this book contributes to that. as i said everything is up in here. i get also see jerusalem on which it is destroyed, blown up by some dramatic as the temple mount. of course it would break the heart of the world. the one thing we know is that ultimately the day of judgment, the second coming, jesus christ will return to jerusalem. so anything we know for sure is that whatever else happens, it will end in jerusalem. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have about 10 minutes of q&a. >> yes, i like you to comment about king david.

and some archaeologists believe that it was literally a small, a few primitives, dwellings. and, therefore, all that described in holy books could not have existed at that time. >> this is the key question my father was so concerned with the it's a very good question. just to take things step by step, the bible of course is, if you believe it, if you're a fundamentalist believe the bible is god's word. you don't need to listen to this. but if you're interested in what really happened, then the bible, the bible is a source like any other, a historical source like any other like any source, who wrote it, when did they write. of course, we don't know the

answer to all that, in the bible. so have to ask what we do know about david. to think about david is like everything in jerusalem, but especially david and solomon, they have become obsessed, session questions on both sides. the politics has forced both sides into extreme positions they would never otherwise take if it had been just a normal historical question. because the palestinians believe anti-israeli, anti-zionists believe the israelis race that claim on king david, and so on. this is why it's such a broad subject, and so viciously debated in israel among israeli archaeologists for a start. but what do we actually know essentially? well, we know that david did exist because of the inscription found in 1993 by an israeli.

refers to israel as the house, the kingdom of israel, the house of david. this is dated early, about 101 and 50 years ago. after david's death. so we know that david was a historical character, but that's pretty much all we know. now, in the archaeology, trouble is with david. inmost archaeology which you don't find isn't held against you. you simply use which define. you understand that archaeology is really like shining a flashlight, or striking a match thousands of years ago, and in that moment he can sometimes find that for some reason with that. so in the city of david, original city of jerusalem, there is very little, maybe one or two buildings that are exactly the david perry. but we also know from new fines

in the city of david that there were huge canaanite structures there. there was a stronghold there from 800 years before david. but since it's survived to today, it was obviously there when david was there. so another was a large structure there. almost certain to jerusalem was much smaller than the biblical accounts suggested and it's probably just a stronghold. david king was probably less a formal kingdom, more likely a confederation of tribes. doesn't mean it didn't exist. interesting for example, the maccabean kingdom which we know existed 1000 years later left virtually almost no archaeological replicas. it's a with david such fascination with whether it exists, with what has been found. what we do know is that there's a virtually no evidence, no

steel inscribed with this name. but again what we do know within three or four years of the probable death of solomon the was a jewish temple on the site that is now the temple mount. we know because the egyptian, an egyptian king came and demanded the goal from the temple. we know there was a jewish kingdom there and we know there was a jewish city. so i'm less excited about whether king david exist or not than many people because we know within about 50 years, all the conditions that were so important did exist. but i'm not one of these people who believe just because there was a jewish kingdom in 1000 b.c. this anyway, this and any political, this diminishes the rights of for example, the palestinians who have been, the arabs have been in jerusalem

since 68. but it is a fascinating question, nonetheless. thanks. sorry, that was a long answer. >> i have two questions, one related to the book and the other is from something you mentioned. you know, alan was a mechanized what he picked on people. the question is why -- if i were studying religion wouldn't i want to go to one place and point out the weaknesses of the religions that are there, rather than going somewhere else in africa or whatever? i think this was intentional that these religions focused on one place to build themselves up and get the attention, very machiavellian. >> that's one question. i know exactly what you're saying. what's fascinating about jerusalem is that each religion can each new revelation that took control of jerusalem, they didn't say we will start from

scratch. the holiness in jerusalem in the tradition. and it's infectious. so what the each did, the jews almost certainly built the first temple on a canaanite shrine. the christians, jesus coach very cautiously to fulfill -- was a practicing jew. and bass many, much of his legitimacy on his study and his fulfillment of these prophecies. so that the jewish scriptures are always vital to christianity and so with a jewish sites, and similarly mohammed, when you study, we don't know if he was literate or not but he certainly was very, very familiar with both the christian and the jewish scriptures, the profits. he revered. for the muslims, king david, the prophet david. and so moses, so they

consciously built on the jewish tradition and christian tradition. what was this about, what was he doing there? he was giving legitimacy to his religion but also he was adapting, adopting, commandeering the holiness that was already there. and that's what all the religions have done throughout time. and that's why there are three religions in jerusalem. >> i recently read there's a lot of anti-semitism in great britain with your great-uncle, and they wouldn't put a jew in the parliament at that time. you were talking about they wanted the jews, you know, get a hold of israel, but yet palestine, but yet his antagonism towards the jews. the british attitude towards the jews was like in many countries, was ambiguous. but, in fact, i mean, what i was

describing about evangelists which is very similar to question of angeles and today in america, was very pro-jewish. of course, there was -- but that was limited in a very big way, that it may surprise many americans. if you look at the story of my ancestor, an italian immigrant arriving penniless in england died with the country say, friends of many credits in europe, the rothschilds any of the other banking families, they were then very wealthy so that's an easy passport acceptance. but nontheless, it does defy some of the preconceptions, does it not, about victorian english and councils and so forth?

>> two quick questions. outside of the last pages of your book, the last chapter of your book, could you give me one maximum two books that are attractive histories of israel-palestine? and the second question, did lawrence affect your thinking or your writings? >> well, everyone loves lawrence. but yeah, i mean, i love his stuff. i think he's a great men. do you like in? he came to me as you're speaking to his image. >> wonderful book. as you know, alexandria, jerusalem, these were the great comedies with her great cities full of many nationalities. nationalism has destroyed all of the what was the other question?

>> one, maxim to objective books on the conflict. >> i think it's quite hard to find an action. i'm kind of thing. most of what i think of, i don't want him because our garden, i regard them as an equals. i'm not saying that to promote my book. i just want to answer the question truthfully and i can't quite. i can think of a lot of books that i loved as a child that are very pro-zionist i cannot see, and that it wouldn't, so i can't answer. but a lot of the modern books written are even neocon, i get is totally unrealistic. for that kind of essentially very anti-israeli, the opposite. that's what i write, i mean, this until you judge when you read the book how i've done all this. it is very hard to find, very hard to find a sort of objective

view of this. and so, so i can't answer your question quite. >> one more question. fire way. >> i came tonight to honor you and this book because i have a long history of loving your work. and very much admire you as a thinker, as a writer. and in the documentary you wrote on catherine the great. so my question is a little bit involved with the work that i'm doing, which is, and i want to show you how i honor you. and what i think of you. i'm doing and now on the friendship between catherine the great and on a. he was a man who could make me think your book on stalin what a handsome man that stalin was. so it gave me the idea that i was going to have stalin undergo a transformation of being. helped out by catherine the

great. what the question i have now, and i haven't filled into your biography yet, "potemkin," but i have catherine trying to sooth "potemkin," i don't know why people have this idea of me, the villages but i don't know why i've gone down in history that way. and catherine is suiting him and cuddling him and stroking him and saying, don't worry, my darling, i have asked them to write a biography of you, and i know he will tell the truth. now, i have to go home tonight and look, shall i be chic scared? but i think it doesn't have a glass of wine been okay, i will. thank you. that's the nicest question i've ever had, thank you very much. before i finished, i can end up today, not quite answer your question which, but i love your

question. but everybody is something. i received a letter from a history teacher in england wrote to me to say that he put up the picture of young stalin, a large poster over his desk. it had become, first of all, one young girl and the many young girls and then all the girls in school have been coming to see him, it was a pilgrimage. he was very alarmed because they all found in so handsome and irresistible. servo to be say, he wrote in one of those funny letters, dear simon, what shall i do about this, about this problem? all the girls in school or love. perhaps i should just say thank you very much for that lovely question here and very flattered and honored and i can't wait to read your novel. >> depending on what you buy, it shall hang. i love catherine the great, and thank you.

ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for having me. [applause] >> for more on author simon sebag montefiore and his work, visit simonsebagmontefiore.com. >> its authors night of the national press club. several different authors argue. selling their books to support charity, and one of those authors is jeremy, booktv has covered him for his book on a new voice for israel. first of all, what is just a? >> j.j. is the pro-israel, pro-peace lobby for a new organization about three years old and we press for america engagement to to help achieve middle east peace. >> how do you stand compared to aipac? >> we are part of the jewish communities that believes that peace and a two-state solution would be in israel and united states best interest and we want to see the president do more,

not less to help achieve these. >> what is the new voice for israel? >> the new voice is to essentially provide a counterweight to some old voices that for too long have purport to speak for the entire jewish community and have had positions on these issues that are more hawkish than the average jewish america. and particularly for those of her 40 and under in the jewish community, supporting israel doesn't mean supporting every decision of the israeli government. and it doesn't mean taking the most hawkish possible view on every issue. >> what is the position they do support that might be different than, say, what you say are the 40 and older? >> the traditional establishment or quell, for instance, the president gave a speech in may in which he said the two state israel and palestine need to be based on 67 lines, the pre-1967 border between the west bank and israel.